The disclosure of Japanese Patent Application No. 2001-350492 filed on Nov. 15, 2001 including the specification, drawings and abstract is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a monitor system of a vehicle outside for detecting a distance between a vehicle and a three-dimensional object existing in front of the vehicle based on information from an image and an information derived from a laser radar, and to a method of monitoring of the vehicle outside.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, technologies relating to an advanced safety vehicle (ASV) have been positively developed and some of the technologies have been in practical use. An advanced safety system which is composed of a TV camera, a laser radar, and the like mounted on a vehicle, detects preceding vehicles and obstructs, determines a degree of danger of collision thereagainst, and gives an alarm to a driver. And the vehicle is stopped by being automatically applied with a brake, or automatically increases or decreases its running speed so as to keep a safe distance between the vehicle and a precedingly running vehicle.
As one of these technologies, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 6-230115, for example, discloses a technology capable of detecting an accurate distance between the vehicles by being provided with two kinds of distance vehicle detecting devices, that is, cameras and a millimeter wave radar. This technology detects the accurate distance between the vehicles by selecting a more appropriate one of the devices, which has data with a higher degree of reliability, according to a running condition change of the vehicle.
However, the conventional technology described above has a problem that it is difficult to promptly process a lot of image data and to execute a precise control with an instant responsiveness. This is because a complicated calculation is required to determine the degree of reliability of the data obtained by the cameras and that of the data obtained by the millimeter wave radar, and thus an excessively long calculation time is necessary to select the data having a higher degree of reliability after the above degrees of reliability have been determined. Further, a problem is also arisen in that a delay is caused when the degrees of reliability are notified to a driver.
An object of the present invention, which was made in view of above circumstances, is to provide a monitor system of the vehicle outside capable of promptly determining a deterioration of the distance detecting capability of a laser radar and the deterioration of the distance detecting capability of an image without executing a calculation using many parameters, and the like. Another object of the present invention is to provide a monitor system of the vehicle outside capable of executing control such as the prompt notification of the diagnosed state of a system to the driver, and the like and to provide a method of monitoring the vehicle outside.
A monitor system includes image-measured distance detecting means for detecting a distance between a vehicle and a three-dimensional object existing in front of the vehicle based on informations of an image in front of the vehicle, laser-measured distance detecting means for detecting the distance between the vehicle and the three-dimensional object existing in front of the vehicle on the basis of the information of a laser radar by projecting a laser beam from the vehicle. The monitor system further includes three-dimensional object recognizing means for recognizing the three-dimensional object existing in front of the vehicle based on the distance detected by the image-measured distance detecting means and the distance detected by the laser-measured distance detecting means. The monitor system of the vehicle outside is characterized by being composed of distance detecting capability diagnosing means for determining a deterioration of the distance detecting capability of the image-measured distance detecting means aswell as determining a deterioration of the distance detecting capability of the laser-measured distance detecting means. Hereupon, the image-measured distance detecting means detects the distance of the three-dimensional object recognized by the three-dimensional object recognizing means and the laser-measured distance detecting means detects the distance of the three-dimensional object recognized by the three-dimensional object recognizing means.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more clearly understood from the following description by referring to the accompanying drawings.